Are You a Swifty?


I am. I think she's great.

And You?

128x128jjbeason14

@wesheadley Perhaps what you’re saying is, “there is great potential for personal growth in exposing oneself to stuff they typically assume to be crap, as one may surprise oneself and avoid a certain stagnation of musical awareness,” or, as Werner Herzog likes to say, “the poet must not close his eyes.”  
These things I can appreciate.

You have to try new things all the time if you're really into music IMO, or you just silo yourself into a comfortable, but eventually boring and too safe little world.
 

I stumbled upon an interesting article a few months back that may explain some of this: Why Do We Stop Exploring New Music as We Get Older? I feel like I’m guilty of this, especially with my Ed Sheeran and Justin Beiber Spotify Playlist that’s been on constant rotation for the past two years :) Some interesting parts:

major 2013 study involving more than 250,000 participants confirmed these changing behaviours. It also showed that the significance we ascribe to music after adolescence declines, and the amount of music we listen to reduces from a high point of 20% of our waking time during adolescence, to 13% in adulthood.
 

These same researchers point to age-related changes to hearing acuity – specifically a lowering tolerance for loud and high-frequency sound – as one cause for a reduced interest in new music for some people.
 

There is consensus that people are highly likely to have their taste shaped by the music they first encounter in adolescence.
 

Adolescence shapes musical taste firstly because our brains are developed to the point where we can fully process what we’re hearing, and secondly because the heightened emotions of puberty create strong and lasting bonds of memory.

What we think of as our “taste” is simply a dopamine reaction arising from patterns our brain recognises which create the expectation of pleasure based on pleasures past. When we stop actively listening to new or unfamiliar music the link between the musical pattern and pleasure is severed.

It may take a decade or two to get there, but the result is, eventually, “young people’s music” will alienate and bring no pleasure.

I don’t necessarily believe in absolutes; I’m sure there’s quite a bit of variability between the lines above. I found it interesting nonetheless.

 

 

@tylermunns "Perhaps what you’re saying is, “there is great potential for personal growth in exposing oneself to stuff they typically assume to be crap, as one may surprise oneself and avoid a certain stagnation of musical awareness,” or, as Werner Herzog likes to say, “the poet must not close his eyes.”  
These things I can appreciate."

That is pretty much what I'm saying, and the reason I linked to my Discogs collection was so that you could see that. I buy a mix of old and new releases.

For female pop artists I'd put Lana Del Rey up there with the very best of them-- from any era. There just isn't as much of it -- and algorithms now often drive artistic and production decisions, whether we realize it or not, and that very idea kind of repulses me.

There is still incredible music being released today-- but it's at a much lower volume and pace than say the 70s, 80s, or 90s I'd generally say. 

Newish releases that I'm liking a lot are:

Real Estate - Daniel
MGMT - Loss of Life
Hurray For The Riff Raff – The Past Is Still Alive
Woods – Perennial
The Smile – Wall Of Eyes
J Mascis – What Do We Do Now
Peter Gabriel – I/O (Dark-Side Mixes)
DC Gore – All These Things
Waxahatchee -- Tigers Blood

@toro3 I don’t believe in most maxims either, especially when it comes to our own  minds, but these observations that you listed are good things to consider and think about.

Even as a kid there were albums that didn’t grab me right off, but there was something in them that made listen again, and eventually, in some cases, I’d "get it".

It took me literally forever to start really loving jazz. I had so little exposure to it as a kid that, as an adult, I had to do a lot of listening to begin to start loving it. For me, jazz is a whole new world that I’m just now getting to explore and I’m having a lot of fun doing just that!

 

More to discover